


Doomed Wanderer

by St_Happosai



Series: The Pig Chronicles [1]
Category: Ranma 1/2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 01:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13893066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St_Happosai/pseuds/St_Happosai
Summary: The ever doomed Ryoga sets out once again on one of his quests, not expecting to end up back at Jusenkenyo, where he faces his worst nightmares all over again. He cannot escape, and is soon consumed by despair, unable to return back home. At the spring he meets an unexpected helper. Ranma? Of course not.





	Doomed Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for the oversize text in the second paragraph. It just wouldn't go away.

How could anyone be so unfortunate? How could anyone have such a bad sense of direction? All he had done was turn the corner. Ryoga sat down on a bench by the side of a pond, and put his head in his hands. How could anyone turn the corner from their house and seemingly teleport 10 miles? 

##  _I guess ten miles isn't that bad,_ he thought, although this probably meant he would be spending the next month trying to get home. He slowly stood up, hoisting his pack once again onto his back.

Wham!

A small black object hit him in the back of the head, before bouncing onto the ground. He squinted, but before he could identify it, a mob of girls, chasing the object with brooms and rakes, shouting  _ KILL! KILL! KILL! _ trampled him. Apparently Happosai was out doing his daily rounds. 

In case you didn't know, Happosai was about a one-and-a-half foot tall pervert, so old that he knew God when he was a kid. His head was his biggest feature, but you could yell into it and hear the echo for hours after words. In other words, he was a freak. He wore a black body robe that covered his feet, and he was so light you could kick him a mile away, which happened more commonly than you would believe. 

Ryoga picked himself off the ground, staring for a brief moment at the indent his nose had made on the ground. Shaking his head, he regained his balance once again and started to limp down the street towards the old ramen shop. The bell rang as he opened the door, and the old woman behind the counter greeted him with a warm smile. 

"I haven't seen you here since you came here a year ago. Did you ever make it home?" 

"Yeah, once for ten minutes. Then I realized I forgot to get milk, so I came back out to get it. Everything else went bad too, so I might as well pick up a new everything." 

"So what can I get for you? Here, have a bowl of ramen. You deserve it." She set a bowl of noodles on the counter in front of him, motioning for him to pick it up. 

Slowly he picked up his chopsticks and gave her a half smile, more sad than not. He remembered his mom, who was still with his dad in China, and how he wouldn't be seeing them for probably the next three years. Why him? He sipped the broth from the rim, his sadness washed away by the warm liquid. He let out a sigh, once again letting his thoughts wander to Akane, the girl he had a never ending love for. He just wished she knew, about everything, about his second self and how much he loved her. It just seemed like every time he had the chance to tell her, he would chicken out or have Ranma knock him unconscious. 

He rested his cheek on the palm of his hand, thinking once more of Akane, when a flying black object nailed him in the back of the head, pasting his head into his ramen. That black object would once again be Happosai, coming to say ‘hello.’ 

"Good morning Ryoga!" he said, snatching the bowl of ramen right out from under his face, and then stealing the chopsticks out of his right hand. He vaulted off the back of Ryoga's head right as a broom smacked Ryoga's head into the wall. The wood split, his face breaking into the sauna next door. 

The sound of chanting grew fainter as the mob chased the pervert away from the shop. He slowly ripped his face out of the wall, trying to avoid the mortified glances he was receiving from the bathers on the other side. Why him? He left a string of yen on the counter and hoisted his backpack and walked out the door, thanking the old woman. 

He walked down the street, the trees on the side casting shadows onto the road, carts bustling by every now and then heading off to who knows where. He turned the corner at the small intersection and vanished, leaving behind only faint footprints on the dusty street. 

/<+>\

He woke up sometime later, lying tucked into his sleeping bag. He sat up and glanced around him, looking for something he would remember. When he got lost he never knew where he would end up. 

This place seemed oddly familiar. His memory was vague, but he was able to recall being in this same exact spot a year or two ago. He lay there trying to pull out some memory of what had happened. 

He remembered landing in a pool of water not ten feet away. The most tragic occurrence that had ever happened to him. He spun around to see that exact same pool he had been knocked into. That girl and panda he had been living by all this time had done that to him, and he felt a burning rage.  _ Why _ had Ranma done this to him!? Why could he never succeed in getting his revenge? Ranma was so slippery, escaping their original duel and running off with his father to China to train in the cursed grounds of Jusenkyo. He had followed them. 

That was the worst mistake of his life. 

He snapped back to reality when he heard a rustling in his sack next to him. He jumped when he saw a small head emerge from the large compartment of his pack. 

"Are they gone yet?" peeped Happosai, peering out of the pack. 

"Old freak, what are you doing here?" asked Ryoga, speaking to his tiny perverted reoccurring problem. "Why the heck did you stow away in my backpack?" 

"The girl squad invested in flamethrowers" whispered Happosai, not convinced that he was safe here. Which he wasn't. 

Ryoga picked him up, tucked him into a tiny ball and booted him into next week. 

_ Why in China? Why in China? Why in China? _ he thought to himself. How had he crossed an entire ocean in a matter of a day or so? He had absolutely no recollection of walking at all, other than turning the corner at the ramen shop. His direction problem seemed almost magic, the way he would just seemingly teleport and wake up who knows where. 

He rolled his sleeping bag up, before sitting down on the ground with a can of cereal to have breakfast. He lit a small fire with various kindling he found. 

He knew he couldn't stay here for more than a little while, as he didn't know how many forms one person could take all at the same time. He glanced over his shoulder, spotting the pool of the drowned black pig. The pool he had fallen into all that time ago. He didn't have fond memories of this place, but he knew that he was stuck here at least for a little while until he found his way out again. His fire flickered, and he breathed in the chilly air. He put his hands by the fire, trying to warm them a little. He once again felt that soothing warm feeling, but a gust of wind extinguished his fire, and once again he felt cold, lonely and depressed. Why him? 

He lay back down. What was he going to do? There was no way he knew that would lead him out of Jusenkyo, and even if there was it would take him at least a week to find it. 

He jumped up onto the bamboo poles that rose out of the water, trying to survey his surroundings. He hopped to the next and the next, trying to at least find something, but the fog was far too thick.

He did glimpse something, however. It seemed to be a small house, with a fire burning inside, letting off enough light to fill the windows. He jumped towards it, landing on the ground and slowly padding towards it. 

He knocked on the door, and a fat Chinese man opened the door to greet him. 

"Hello, Mr. Customer, and welcome to the Jusenkyo springs training grounds! I do believe that I have seen you here before, have I not? Your were with the panda and the little girl. What brings you back here?" 

"Horrible sense of dir- Waaaait... weren't you the one who tried to cook me!?" 

"Ah yes! You is pig man! Honest mistake, most sincere apologies! Come, sit by fire." He lead Ryoga into the guest room, a large open space with tables and pillows and a nice large fire burning in the fireplace. He walked over to the fire, warming his hands once again. 

This morning had been unusually chilly, even for Jusenkyo. He might as well stay for a little while, after all, it wasn't like he was getting out of here any time soon. 

He got up and walked over to the corner where he put down his pack and started to lay out his sleeping bag. 

"Excuse me, but is there any way out of Jusenkyo?" 

"Not with this kind of fog, sir. The for will probably last a little while, but you are welcome to stay here in the meantime," said the man, bringing out two bowls of steaming hot white rice and soy sauce. He set one down at a place for Ryoga, and another for himself on the opposite side of the table. They both knelt down at the small table and ate the rice, neither of them saying a word, but frequently exchanging glances. 

"I do hope that you enjoy your stay here at Jusenkyo," said the man, finally finishing his bowl of rice and sitting back to pat his stomach. 

/<+>\

It was several days until the fog finally lifted, and Ryoga stretched his arms and walked out into the crisp morning air. He counted the days he had been here. 

He thought it was about seven or so, but his thoughts were interrupted by a UFP (unidentified flying pervert) with landed with a  _ moosh _ right in his face. The pervert he had kicked into next week had finally caught up with real time. Just another grievance. 

Why wouldn't the old pervert just die of old age? He would save everybody a lot of hassle everyday. 

The answer was quite simple: Happosai was too dumb to die. He didn't realize that he had exceeded his lifespan, and death just couldn't get itself through his head. He didn't realize that he was well past the age any living thing should be, and what effect does a concept have on someone who doesn't understand it that thoroughly? Zero. 

“Hey, old freak. Why do you have to make my existence as miserable as you possibly can,” he said, prying Happosai off of his face. 

“I don’t have to. Ruining other people’s lives comes naturally. Now, where’s the girl’s facility. I need to do my morning peeping.” 

“There’s nothing for probably miles around. There is only one other person besides the two of us, and that’s the fat chinese guy you met probably sixteen or seventeen years ago” (during the Pantyhose Tauro series, book 16). 

Happosai’s face shattered, and he crumbled to the ground weeping. You could see the words “no girls” echoing through his empty head. Probably the one concept he could grasp. 

“I’ll tell you what, Ryoga. I can rid you of your pig body for good and get us out of here. Under one condition: you become my devoted disciple. You don’t have much of a choice, because your sense of direction is bad enough that you can’t get through a maze with a map.” 

Ryoga was torn. He could have all the freedom of a real human at the cost of his own freedom to the hands of this pervert, but at least he would be able to get out of these springs. But did he really want to lose his pig body? While it could be a burden at times, all of the best things that had ever happened to him had happened while in his pig body. He had been able to come up close to Akane. He knew how much Akane loved P-Chan, and did he really want to give all of that up. 

“No way, old freak, there’s no way I’m giving up my freedom and Akane to become your disciple!” Ryoga shouted, his head nearly catching fire. He stood suddenly and stomped his foot down. “There’s no way I’m giving up my freedom like that!” 

“You might be interested in taking your foot out of the fire. Fire’s hot.” said Happosai, looking at Ryoga’s burning foot. 

“AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH” shrieked Ryoga, bounding into the air. He landed with a thud, smoke still emanating from his scorched foot. He picked up Happosai and drop-kicked him as far as he possibly could. 

Happosai landed about half of a mile away in the “spring of drowned pervert.” Happosai resurfaced, unchanged by the water. 

He remembered this pool of water. Cologne had taken him here on a “date” probably a century before, and had tied him to a cinder block and dropped him down into the water. Happosai had sat on the bottom for a few hours cursing Cologne before he thought of taking a breath. He wiggled free of the chains and bobbed to the surface. He did not change because he was the pervert who had supposedly drowned in that spring. 

Happosai made his way back to the guest house and sat at the low table to have a bite to eat. He sat on a small pillow, slowly munching the hot rice. Sometime later when he was just finishing his second bowl of rice he heard a booming sound coming from the ceiling. He could tell it was Ryoga by the way the muffled shouted sounded something like “screw you, dumb pervert!” 

Happosai sighed, and lay back to take a nap after a good meal. 

A few days passed, and Happosai would walk around the grounds every morning. He would see Ryoga’s camp somewhere within the springs, but in a different place every morning. Ryoga would be sitting there cursing to himself, looking around for a way out. 

_ Screw it _ , thought Ryoga “Where is that old man?” 

Happosai just stood there and watched as Ryoga got up and walked towards him. 

“What can I do for you?” asked Happosai. 

“I think I might take you up on your deal. Cure me of this cursed pig body and help me get out of here. If you fill your end, I’ll fill my end and become your disciple.” Ryoga stepped towards Happosai and reached out his hand. Happosai shook it. The deal had been made. 

“Follow me. We will first go to the spring of drowned black pig.” Happosai led Ryoga back to that tragic spring. 

At first Ryoga just stared into it. He felt no fear, but maybe a little hesitant to step into the water. Slowly he bent down and ran his hand through it. It felt cold, but it gave him the warm feeling of having all of his problems once again solved. Happosai, however, started to grow impatient. 

“Well? Are you going to go into the spring or are you not? A deal’s a deal.” Ryoga didn’t respond, so Happosai just pushed him in. 

How a little old man like that could push someone as strong as Ryoga into a pool of water no one will ever know. 

Ryoga at first floundered, for an instant morphing back into his pig body, but soon it left from him in a flash of black energy and he rose as a human unconscious towards the surface of the water. He had finally been cured. 

He drifted towards the bank of the small pool, finally gasping for breath and spitting out the cold and surprisingly salty water. He crawled up onto the shore, looking at his hands and feeling his body. He was drenched, but he was human once more. He felt empty, like the purpose of his life had fled him. Happosai walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s about time that we left.” 

Ryoga stood up, wavering slightly and walked towards his camp where he began to once again pack everything up. He hoisted his belongings onto his shoulder and slowly dragged after Happosai, who moved on the land bridge between the springs towards the rocky cliff that dropped off from the spring grounds. He bounced down from rock to rock, Ryoga sliding down the incline after him. 

They landed some hundred feet on the ground below, and Happosai once again began to lead Ryoga in the direction of the ocean, which lapped onto the golden shores. 

“We must cross this. I can sit on your pack and give you directions, and you can do the swimming part,” offered Happosai. 

“Thanks old freak. I always wanted to do all the work,” groaned Ryoga sarcastically, splashing into the water and Happosai jumped onto his pack. 

Ryoga swam away from shore and into the blue abyss. The waves rolled past him, rocking and lurching, splashing every now and then into his face. Happosai, who was giving directions like “straight” “keep going straight” “continue straight” was slowly falling asleep, the rocking making him very drowsy. He soon began to doze off. 

Ryoga can’t do anything straight to save his life, and he soon began to swim in a wide circle. He swam for hours until he spotted land. 

“Hey, old freak! Land off the front! We’re home!” he shouted excitedly, rousing the old man. He swam as fast as he could towards the speck of land, reaching it within the hour. 

He dashed onto land, laughing and tossing Happosai and his pack into the air, letting them land with a crunch on the sand. He ran to a cliff by the side of the beach. 

“Hey, old man, this looks exactly like the one we came down,” he laughed. 

His laughter faded as he saw the skid marks left by his feet on the dirt face of the cliff. He once again sank to his knees, falling with his face to the ground. 

Why him? 

He climbed up the side of the cliff, reaching the top in a matter of minutes. There it was; the cursed spring of Jusenkyo. He felt so sad looking out over all those pools. 

They made him think of Akane. They made him think she would never love him again. He had to regain his pig body. 

He ran to the spring of the pig not one hundred yards away, over the bridges of rock between the springs. He skidded to a stop at the pool, just as he saw a black dot appearing over the cliff. 

Before Happosai could reach him he dove into the pool. When Happosai reached the edge of the pool he was standing face to face with a little black pig about his own size. 

“This doesn’t mean our deal is off! I already kept half of my deal, even if you undid my work. Half of my deal has been made!”

Ryoga blew past Happosai, dashing for the guest house. Happosai lunged for him, but P-chan rear kicked him, knocking him back into the dirt. Ryoga jumped up onto the small table then scrambled to the counter not a foot higher where he made a dash for the pot of boiling rice. Happosai broke into the doorway, spotted P-chan and jumped for him. 

He ran smack into Ryoga’s chest, who emerged from the pot just as Happosai grabbed for the little black pig. 

He grabbed Happosai, who made a sort of squeak. Ryoga took the iron pan and rope from the cupboard and tied it around Happosai. “Fool, you’ll never get home without me!” 

“Stuff it, old goat!” shouted Ryoga, hurling Happosai into the spring of drowned pervert. He landed with a loud plunk, the largest sound a person that small can make. 

Ryoga jumped down the cliff, leveling the ground around him, creating a plume of dirt. He rushed for his pack. He hoisted it one final time onto his back. The ropes that bound Happosai snapped as he made a break for the cliff, jumping down the several hundred foot drop. He bolted after Ryoga, who was running along the edge of the beach. 

_ What is he doing _ ? Thought Happosai, gaining on him. He lunged one final time for Ryoga, who swiftly turned into the forest. Happosai rolled back onto his feet in an instant and ran after him into the forest. 

The tracks just stopped. Ryoga was gone. Disappeared. Happosai was once again all alone.


End file.
